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The parliamentary lobby for Adult Education and ESOL is on Wednesday 14th October. Hosted by UCU London Region and Action for ESOL, speakers so far include Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell MP, UCU President Liz Lawrence, Dianne Abbott MP and ESOL students.

Action for ESOL needs you for their campaign to save ESOL in the UK. Thousands of refugees and asylum seekers will not have access to education as a results of the cuts in ESOL. Thousands of people are currently already on waiting lists, hundreds of teachers have lost their jobs. This is a slow destruction of adult education and is an attack on refugees’ and migrants’ rights.

On the Day

We will meet on the day at 12 noon in Parliament Square for photo shoot and to start going into parliament. Please bring your banners, placards, etc. We are not allowed to take banners inside parliament but there will be a contingent outside to keep a display of banners going while the lobby is taking place inside. The lobby is in committee room 10 from 1-3pm. We need students to come and tell their stories , ex-ESOL students are also welcome. Students can speak together in small groups if they lack confidence. Please just let the organisers know when you arrive on the day.

Remember: You don’t need to stay for the whole time if your students need to go back to pick up their children or have other commitments. and you can bring younger ESOL learners as well as adults.

What you can do now

1. Students’ homework or classwork this week – write to your MP here asking them to meet you at the lobby on 14 October and saying why you don’t want ESOL courses to be cut.

2. Email Hannah Wray at hannahmgw@hotmail.com now to let us know how much money is being cut from the budget and how many jobs are being lost at your workplace. This will help to build up a nationwide picture of the impact of the cuts to add to our briefing documents for the lobby.

3. Set up a team to distribute the flyer FreeESOLleaflet around your college or workplace and ESOL department.

6. Follow us on Twitter @ActionforESOL. Tag the following organisations to encourage them to come @skillsfunding@NIACEhq @bisgovuk and use the #loveESOL hashtag

7. Every Thursday at 9pm, join the online #ukfechat Twitter debate with hundreds of other ESOL teachers and raise awareness about the cuts in ESOL

Action for ESOL also supports the rally in Leicester called by Leicester Social Forum, supported by UCU, NUT, Leicester Civil Rights Movement and Leicester and District TUC. The rally is about defending post-16 education, but will have a specific focus on ESOL and has been timed for the same day as an Action for ESOL protest in London. You can download the flyer here

We can make this work , we can make a difference , past campaigns have been successful , let’s make this one a success too!

We are dismayed at the latest announcement of massive cuts to ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) provision. On 21st July the Skills Funding Agency announced that ESOL courses which have been provided for students receiving Job Seeker’s Allowance will be cut with immediate effect.

This latest cut is on top of a 24% reduction to funding for Further Education this year, which has meant extensive losses to ESOL provision nationally. In addition, it has been announced that adult courses will be cut by a further 3.9%, which will be applied retrospectively to adult budgets set in March.

The government has not presented any viable alternative provision for students to learn English.

The recent announcement that colleges should provide ESOL classes without funding is ridiculous and unworkable, as is the suggestion that volunteers should fill the gap. If ESOL students are to make progress, they need a rigorous assessment and teaching programme and dedicated, qualified teachers.

Furthermore, the timing of this government decision presents an additional difficulty as it throws careful college planning and budgets into disarray because it has been announced at a point in the year when college managements have finalised timetables and courses for the forthcoming year.

Action for ESOL oppose this latest round of cuts, which will impact on students, teachers, children of our ESOL students and on society as a whole.

On 20th July David Cameron said: ‘At the moment we have parts of the country where opportunities remain limited … where language remains a real barrier, where too many women from minority communities remain trapped outside the workforce, and where educational attainment is low.’

Many colleges and providers have been offering English classes to individuals referred by the Job Centre whose level of English was assessed as below Entry 3, a level identified as not high enough to access employment. The government decision to implement further cuts runs counter to their stated aim to help individuals develop skills in order to gain jobs and communicate with others.

Students need English classes to access jobs, participate in society, support their children, our future generation, through the education system and prevent isolation. Students are now left with an uncertain future, without the means to communicate with other English speakers and without the hope that they can gain a good level of English and gain qualifications that will help them on their chosen career path. Many ESOL students also bring skills and qualifications from their own countries but need to improve their English in order to be able to use these in the UK. These skills and qualifications are of benefit to the whole country.

ESOL teachers have specialist qualifications and many have years of experience in the field. The loss of these teachers through cuts is damaging to all.

UCU London Region has called a national demonstration on Saturday 25th April. Action for ESOL is supporting this call. We want to turn the day into “A festival of education” with ESOL teach outs, games, singing, food, theatre and more.

Following the success of the London region lobby of parliament on Wednesday 18th March which several hundred staff and students attended, the campaign against the cuts continues to win widespread support.

ALL branches are called on to

* publicise the London Region demonstration on Wednesday 25th March at 6pm, details and downloadable flyer

* actively support ‘love FE day’ next Thursday 26 March which aims to celebrate lifelong learning and calls for a STOP to the potentially devastating proposed cuts to further education (FE). UCU and campaign partners ask you to mark the day by highlighting the importance of FE and what all of our communities stand to lose if these cuts go ahead.

• Please tweet using #loveFE tag and let us know about any other activities you have planned.

Thousands of members have written on the petition describing how adult education transforms and enriches our lives. These cuts could be a deathblow to FE and we need to build a groundswell of opposition to force the coalition, the devolved governments and whoever is in Westminster after 7 May, to think again.

Please support the London demonstration on Wednesday 25th March at 6pm and the ‘love FE day’ on Thursday 26 March.

We are calling on all our supporters to circulate and sign the petition launched by UCU and campaign partners including National Union of Students (NUS), Trade Union Congress (TUC), 157 group, the Association of Colleges (AoC), UNISON, National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) and Unite, which has already collected nearly almost 15,000 signatures.

On the day, there will be a mass picnic on the grass opposite Parliament, hosted by Tower Hamlets College. This will be followed by a photo shoot at 1pm sharp before we go in to Westminster together. Helpers will direct you. The visitors entrance is opposite Parliament square. See here for a map http://www.parliament.uk/visiting/access/directions/

How the lobby works: You will queue up from the visitors entrance and go through security. Then you are in the Palace of Westminster. You will naturally make your way through the building to the Octagon – a reception lobby just outside the Commons. There will be lots of us there by then to explain what to do. It’s easy. You can ’Green card’ your MP at the reception desk. A clerk will take your name and postcode and then go find your MP. Your MP will come and meet you to hear your concerns. You can give them notice you are coming atwww.faxyourmp.com - but this is not necessary, you can just turn up. If your MP is not available they will receive a record of your visit. In previous lobby’s people buddied up if there MPs were not available and had a chance to talk to other MPs and Ministers.

It is budget day so Parliament will be quite busy. After people have met MPs we have a Committee meeting room booked.

Speakers so far include Sally Hunt UCU, John McDonnell MP, Rushanara Ali MP, Jim Fitzpatrick MP, Jeremy Corbyn MP, NUS, Ian Ashman (AoC) Principal Hackney, Gerry McDonald (AoC) Principal THC. We also have speakers from other trade unions including Christine Lewis, Head of Colleges, UNISON, a national officer from the NUT, UNITE, and the FBU. We are chasing some up and have sent out more invites. We are hoping Meg Hillier MP and Dianne Abbot will also join us – please ask them if they are your MPs.

We have a waves of guest speakers some will arrive at 2pm and others at 3pm. We want everyone who comes on the lobby to join the debate and discussion about why adult education matters. We especially want to encourage as many students as possible to tell us in their own words why adult education is important to them.

Please join us for the UCU Parliamentary Lobby on FE Funding cuts, next Wednesday April 2nd at 2pm. We are asking all ESOL teachers and students to come along and tell their MP why Adult Education is so important for them.

Adult Education has suffered a 34% cut over the last few years & faces another 9% cut this year. We need to put pressure on MPs to protect ESOL, Access and all Adult Education before it disappears completely.

Students can write to their MPs and make an appointment to meet them at the lobby next Wednesday to say how education cuts are going to affect them.

They can then write an email to them saying they are coming to the UCU Parliamentary Lobby on FE Funding next Wednesday; they would like to make an appointment to see the MP to talk about how cuts to education will affect them and their family; what they study, and why they need it.

A free afternoon of workshops and discussion exploring the impact on ESOL students of welfare cuts, the expansion of benefit sanctions and workfare. Come along to share information and think about what we as teachers can do to support our students and show solidarity with them.

1.45 – 3.00 Myth-busting and clarification on mandated activity and conditionality. Also – sharing information with the job centre: legal and ethical questions for teachers

3.00 – 3.15 Break

3.15 – 4.30 Supporting learners on Employment and Support Allowance (with Disabled People Against Cuts). Sharing ideas for participatory lessons on benefits

4.30 – 5.00 Planning our next steps

Boycott Workfare is a UK-wide campaign to end forced unpaid work for people who receive social security. We take action against organisations profiting from workfare, encourage others to pledge to boycott it and actively inform people of their rights.

“Migrants want to learn English: why isn’t the government investing to help them do so?”

In his Spending Review, George Osborne announced that “From now on, if claimants don’t speak English, they will have to attend language courses until they do. This is a reasonable requirement in this country. It will help people find work. But if you’re not prepared to learn English, your benefits will be cut.”

As ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teachers and teaching union members, we know that this statement contains many contradictions which the national Action for ESOL campaign has highlighted again and again over the last few years.

First of all, the problem with learning English is not a lack of willingness to learn. Many ESOL providers report lengthy waiting lists and heavily over-subscribed courses; they cannot meet the demand. The problem for those who wish to learn English is the lack of access to classes due to year on year cuts to Further Education funding, cuts to FE and ESOL provision and loss of ESOL teaching jobs. Across the board, FE providers have suffered an 8% cut in funding this year and this has led to increased staff redundancies and course closures. In many individual colleges the funding cuts are as high as 25%.

In 2010 the national Action for ESOL campaign was co-founded by ESOL teachers supported by UCU, NATECLA and other organisations as a response to the announcement that students on benefits, mainly women, would be forced to pay up to £1000 for an ESOL course. A year of campaigning resulted in a U-Turn by the government on this policy.

Another contradiction is that when students on benefits do get a place on an ESOL course, they are then penalised financially by restrictions on their eligibility for free classes. This is particularly the case for the those who are working in part-time or low -paid jobs who are forced to pay for a year’s course because the benefits they receive are classed as ‘inactive’. When George Osbourne says learning English will help people find work he is absolutely right. Yet under the same government policies, low paid workers are penalised despite being both willing to learn and also having succeeded in finding work.

The majority of migrants both want and need to learn English and the claim that they do not belongs to the racialised immigration and cultural agenda in which migrants are scape-goated and ‘language’ often serves as a proxy for race.

Anti-immigration and racist ideas are being popularised by political parties like UKIP; the tragic death of Lee Rigby in Woolwich was exploited by far right organisations like the English Defence League by taking to the streets and attacking mosques round the country; and racially motivated assaults on individuals is on the increase. In this context, negative stereo-typing of ESOL learners and migrants in this way is not only a false portrayal of those who wish to learn English and find work, but also sets a dangerous tone for those groups who are becoming increasingly vulnerable.